


Delayed Takeoff

by RosYourBoat



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen, Sexual Harassment, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosYourBoat/pseuds/RosYourBoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Abu Dhabi, before G-ERTI or even MJN, there was Martin and his first real pilot's job. Poor Martin has never been able to catch a break. </p><p>This story is unfinished, and will remain so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delayed Takeoff

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my recent excavation and expunction of all of my old fics from my hard drive to an online form, where they can be held as an indelible and inescapable memento of my past obsessions. These fics are all unbeta'd and heretofore unseen by anyone but me. I hope someone else feels some of the enjoyment I received from writing them.
> 
> "Delayed Takeoff" was written in May of 2012, and will remain unfinished, although I will admit that this one was a favorite of mine. Inspired by Martin's veiled reference to a previous "horrible job" before he started working for MJN.

“ _Look Marty, you’ve got a pretty mouth, but would you just_ shut it _for one minute?”_

_“I can think of better things it could be doing.”_

_“Well, yeah, obviously. Think we could get a few minutes of quiet if we got him to—”_

Martin scrunched his eyes shut as tightly as he could only a split second before his handful of ice-cold water splashed into his face, taking his breath away but acting as a poor distraction from his thoughts. Well, memories. He cupped his hands under the faucet again and buried his face in the pool of water that filled them. His movements were sharp and violent, uncaring of the dampness that formed on his collar and in the stray bits of hair around his forehead. There was no one to see.

Finally, when he felt that any warmth on his face—especially from his stinging eyes—was gone and his muscles were getting sore from tensing up against the cold, Martin turned off the faucet. He scrubbed a hand towel over his face roughly and breathed through the floral-scented towel until he was sure that the stinging wouldn’t return. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror when he grabbed his duffel bag from the floor and threw the door open.

He got cautious looks from the few housemates that were loitering in the kitchen across the hall from the loo, but only Kate was brave enough to call out, “Alright, Martin?”

For once, Martin didn’t feel like interacting with his friendly housemates (a new bunch that had only moved in two weeks ago, they were probably his favorite ones yet) and only gave a half-hearted wave of his hand and a vague mumble before booking it up the steep steps to his attic room.

He dropped the duffel by the foot of his bed and toed his shoes off haphazardly. He cursed under his breath when he had to slow down to carefully unbutton and hang up his uniform (he only had two and dry cleaning was expensive) when he felt like ripping it to shreds. He remembered the pride that had filled his chest to bursting only two days before, when he had put on the carefully pressed pilot’s uniform for the first time. He even felt a small bit of it now as he hung it up with shaking fingers, the pride nearly buried under the bitter disappointment and rage and crippling fear and that damnable bit of persistent hope that insisted that _things will get better when I settle in, it’s just a bit of childish hazing, once I get used to things—_

And now his eyes were stinging again, damn them. Martin hated himself sometimes.

The sad thing was that he shouldn’t have even been surprised. It was an unfortunate truth that Martin was familiar with sexual harassment. Not giving it, of course, but receiving it.

He flinched at the unwitting innuendo and burrowed under the sheets on his bed after carelessly donning flannel pajamas and a long-sleeved tee even though it was only four in the afternoon (1600, he reminded himself). It was one of those days and he wasn’t going to fight it when he so dearly needed the comfort.

Martin had reacted much the same way a couple of weeks after he started his stewarding job two years ago, after a series of awful flights with particularly grabby passengers and off-color jokes from the pilots when he had hesitantly brought up the matter. His fellow stewardesses (he was the only steward) had been vaguely sympathetic but also brutally pragmatic. They had dealt with years of bum-pinching passengers and smarmy pilots who felt entitled to a grope or more from their hosties. _You’ll get used to it,_ they told him. _You’ll toughen up and learn how to handle ‘em. If you can’t, maybe this isn’t the job for you._

They had been right, to a point. He had eventually learned how to “handle” overbearing passengers, turning aside their advances with a mock-reproachful wag of the finger and a fake smile or wink since his wavering voice and stammer always betrayed his severe discomfort when he tried to tell them off.

He had never gotten the hang of “handling” pilots, however. He inevitably turned into a blushing, stammering, tongue-tied mess before managing to escape under the cover of their patronizing laughter.

He had expected—hoped, rather, he finally admitted to himself in the safety of his bed sheets—that it would change when he finally got his pilot’s license (almost three months ago, now) and became a junior pilot, finally equal (well, nearly) to other pilots. But if he was hoping for any respect at all, he probably should have become a pilot for a different airline. Now he was forced to work in close quarters in the flight deck with the very pilots that had squeezed his bum when he brought them lunch or trapped him against the serving trolley to try and steal a kiss or said dirty things to him just to see him blush.

It was clear that they didn’t think of him as a proper pilot, even after only two days of work. They scoffed when he quoted regulations, they spoke patronizingly when he asked a question, and they ignored him when they weren’t relentlessly poking fun at him to wind him up. And Martin didn’t like to think that he was thin-skinned or gullible, but it was all too clear that he made it easy for them. He just wish he knew how, so that he could make it stop. Unfortunately, it was just… him, and he’d tried not being him for years but it never worked.

“ _Lord_ , Martin, you’re throwing a nice pity party for yourself now, aren’t you?” He hissed to himself into his pillow. He threw himself onto his side and curled up, dragging the sheets around him too tightly so he could feel as constrained and smothered and suffocated on the outside as he felt on the inside. “You have no reason to complain. You’re 28 years old and you’re finally doing what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve been working toward this your whole life! You’ve scrimped and saved and worked between classes and exams and retakes for _seven years_ now. You should just be glad you’re a pilot and you’re able to _fly_ now. Everything else… will work itself out. So.”

He paused, waiting for the frustration and anger and anxiety in his chest to loosen slightly. “There.” He said with finality. “No more talking to yourself, you great bloody loon, before someone hears you.”

There was a quick knock on his door before Kate popped her head in. “Hoo hoo! Martin? You alright up here?” Martin flailed in his cocoon of sheets before landing on a heap on the hardwood floor. He reminded himself for the umpteenth time since he had moved here five years ago that he needed to get a rug.

“Kate! Yes, hi, what is it?” He blurted at he jumped to his feet. “Oh, yes, yes, I’m fine, completely fine.”

“If you say so; only, I heard you talkin’ up here. Were you on your phone?” She looked curiously at his rumpled bed, the sheets now trailing forlornly on the ground about his feet.

“E-er…”

“Well, anyway, I thought you looked stressed when you came in earlier and I wondered if you want to come down for a cuppa while I make some dinner? Or I can bring some up for you in a bit?”

Martin felt a sudden rush of gratefulness and affection for Kate and his other housemates. They really were brilliant and he was lucky to have them. God knows he’d had worse in the past.

“No no, I’ll come with you, if-if that’s alright,” he said, attempting a small smile. She beamed back at him and led the way downstairs, chatting the whole way about the size of his room (true, it was bigger than all of the others, but it also had a low ceiling and it had no heating or cooling whatsoever; partly why he got it so cheap).

She had him sit at the big kitchen table with a cup of tea (she made excellent tea, Martin had discovered) while she bustled around from the fridge to the counter and stove. Music played in the background, some new stuff that Martin wouldn’t have a hope of recognizing. Kate was slightly overweight, but had a beautiful smile and green, green eyes. Like with all women, Martin was horrid when it came to having an actual conversation with her, but she didn’t seem to mind his stammers or awkward tangents. Mostly, he sat quiet while she chatted about her classes and this or that bloke, until the scent of thick stew filled the room, drawing the other housemates out of their rooms to join. The room was soon filled with voices and the clattering of cutlery and chairs around the table.

Martin looked out the window at the darkening night and the brisk November wind whipping the branches of trees back and forth, and felt warm.

* * *

 

Months passed. Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Years passed with little fanfare, as his housemates had returned home for the holidays. With both of their parents gone, Martin spent a half-hearted Boxing Day with Simon and Caitlin back in Wokingham but had to return the next day for a flight. He was secretly glad for the excuse, as his siblings couldn’t stop expressing their astonishment that he had actually become a pilot and hiding their skepticism behind their smiles. They finally convinced him to take his dad’s old van back with him (“Just in case,” whatever that meant) despite knowing that he had hated the ruddy thing since he had been old and desperate enough to help his dad, who was an electrician and wanted Martin to follow in his footsteps just like Simon had (except Simon hadn’t, really, since he became an electrical engineer and made more money than Dad ever had).

Although Martin was grateful to return after Boxing Day, it was only for the same reason that he had been able to survive the months as a junior pilot: he _loved_ flying. He loved it so much that being able to do it every week—and be _paid_ to do it!—was worth the near-constant degradation, humiliation, and stress of his work environment.

He would’ve quit and damn the consequences, if many of the pilots he worked with hadn’t actually eased off in the months since he worked there. Contrary to popular belief, Martin _did_ in fact have some self-worth buried beneath his seething insecurities, and he wouldn’t stoop to giving in to his senior pilot’s pushy advances just to keep from losing his job. He’d start using his dad’s old van to hump boxes around before that happened.

By now, he only had to deal with Captain James “Jimmy” Brent or First Officer Paul McHamish—his most persistent “admirers”—every third flight or so. Since he managed to escape them each time, he found it bearable despite how it made his skin crawl.

“Can’t you say anything to Human Resources? Blow the whistle on them at all?” Kate asked one night as he was complaining over a cup of tea. She didn’t know the full extent of the… _situation,_ but Martin couldn’t help his frustration today when he had somehow failed to prevent Captain Brent from looming behind him while he was filling out his logbook and sliding a bold hand from Martin’s waist to hip while murmuring a suggestion about what they could use the desk for. Luckily, Martin had just finished his logbook and managed to scarper after stammering a useless “I-I don’t t-think that’s a good idea.”

Martin groaned and dropped his head against his arms stretched out on the table. “No, it’s just my word against his. He’ll just say I’m high-strung and blowing a ‘harmless joke’ all out of proportion. He’s driving me _mad_ , though! I don’t know what to do!”

“Have you tried… talking to them?” Martin looked up in time to see her wince at her own words as if she already knew the answer and felt stupid for asking. He snorted and dropped his head again in response.

“If they haven’t stopped by now, they won’t stop because I _talk_ to them. It wouldn’t even be talking, anyway; I can barely request a heading from either of them without stuttering,” he muttered. He startled when he felt her hand patting his outstretched one comfortingly. He kept still, marveling that he was not only managing to hold a conversation with a woman without tripping over himself, but was also being touched by her, comforted by her, without feeling like his heart was about to burst out of his chest.

“Oh, Martin… if you really feel like there’s no way to solve this, have you thought about quitting?”

“I have,” he admitted quietly after a lengthy pause. “But-but I _can’t_. I’m finally doing what I’m meant to do, and I can’t let them take that away from me so easily. Besides, I’m not exactly on high demand, what with it taking me… as many goes as it did to get my license. I mean, I-I’ll _do_ it as a last resort, but not until I’m sure I can’t deal with it. It hasn’t gone _too_ far…”

“Yet.” Kate concluded. Martin nodded in agreement, feeling miserable. Kate squeezed his hand tightly. “Please, _please_ be careful, Martin. Sexual harassment can go very bad, very fast; even when the victim is a man. Just make sure you always keep an exit open and _don’t_ leave it too long if he gets worse.”

Martin nodded again, throat frozen as his frustration and anger faded and the humiliation of the situation finally dawned on him. _God, she’s treating me like a battered woman,_ he thought to himself, feeling his face flush even redder than it had been since he left the airfield. He had never been one to pour out his feelings—he had never had someone to pour them out _to_ —and yet here he was spouting off like a faucet that’s sprung a leak. God, what Kate must think of him!

Kate squeezed his hand again with a smile and then let go. “How about some dinner? Food’s good for the soul, as well as the body, I say! Here, you have some more tea and it’ll be ready in a flash.”

"Th-thank you," Martin said, trying to convey that it was for more than the tea.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Liked my writing? You might like my Tumblr. rosyourboat.tumblr.com


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